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Thursday, 17 August 2017

I often get asked about the return on investment for coaching, or any soft skills learning and development interventions I deliver.

It's not a question I have a ready made answer for, as it very much depends where the individuals is starting from. That said, there are some common outcomes that I'd like to explore in this post - and they're outcomes that relate to what coachees or attendees will be improving, and the impact that improvement will have.

The biggest outcome of most coaching sessions is an increase in confidence, where as the biggest outcome from workshops is often around improved communication and influencing.

Rather than focus on the outcome of the interventions though, I want to look at the barriers that are getting in the way of optimal performance, and that are demolished or reduced as a result of the coaching/workshop.

1. Unconfident

Easily written, and often under estimated, but what price a lack of confidence:

Avoids conflict with colleagues, managers, stakeholders and suppliers

Doesn't set stretching targets

Gets bullied into doing something they shouldn't

Isn't able to stand up for, and therefor deliver, best procurement practice

Is easily swayed away from an agreed processes, procedures or decisions

Inconsistent in approach

Consistently looks outside themselves for approval and direction

Delayed decision making

Doesn't challenge others even in areas where they have the expertise

Stays within their comfort zone and avoids anything innovative or new

Doesn't look for advancement or promotion (not in and of it self an issue, unless they have the capability to do that, if only they had a little more confidence)

Motivation is an interesting topic as people often ignore that there is a lot they can do to impact and improve their own motivation - it's not a done deal it's impacted by our values and we can proactively use them to inspire action or otherwise.

Coaching can significantly improve coachee motivation, and provide an understanding about what makes them tick, and therefore results in reducing or mitigating the following outcomes:

Can't be bothered attitude

Tired and lethargic

Unfoccused

Unable to make decisions

Dissatisfaction

Inability to inspire others or even get them to listen to them

Quick to judge and blame others

Not taking personal responsibility

Lackadaisical

Makes mistakes

Refusal to do some tasks

Applying for the wrong jobs

People leaving

Just imagine what your team performance would be if these were removed.

3. Resistant to Change

Whilst coaching and soft skills interventions may help us to personally expand our comfort zones and reduce our resistance to change, most often than not the workshops help people to understand the process of change, and how to manage others resistance to change better. Which results in minimising:

Stakeholders doing their own thing

Time spent arguing and persuading stakeholders of the merit of the proposed strategy

One outcome of coaching can be holding the mirror up to a coachee on how often they absolve responsibility and don't take personal responsibility for actions, outcomes or problems, which may currently be resulting in:

Problems escalating

I kept writing about the other barriers, and left this to last and realised that being reactive is all about not getting the job done - waiting to be chased, waiting for someone else to tell you what to do. Which may lead to a lack of completion and issues being left unresolved!

After all, if you keep doing what you've always done you'll get the same outcome - as demonstrated in this Purchasing Coach vlog (just turn the sound down a little first).

5. Indecisive/Negative

I was being indecisive about whether to highlight indecisive or being overly negative here - a great reminder about why 1:1 coaching is helpful.

In a classroom the impact of negativity or strategies for decision making can be outlined and explored. In a coaching session an individual's personal relationship with, and reasons for, indecision or negativity can be explored much more deeply, and action plans agreed to release their hold.

Without an intervention it's easy for performance to be impacted by these underlying behaviours, that if not addressed can cycle down into inaction and even depression.

This post on not wanting to do the hard work needed to achieve a goal might help identify some of the discussion points that would be covered in a coaching session tackling this barrier to effective performance. So too this post entitled What's stopping you which looks at the barriers to achieving our goals.

The cost of ineffective communication is so high it surprises me that so little is done to improve communication skills on a regular basis. The outcomes of ineffective communication might include:

Miscommunication

Misunderstanding

Conflict

Resistance

Isolation

Failure

Inability to persuade others

Inability to influence others

Uninspiring to others

Unable to change others points of view

Missed deadlines

Lack of support to do the project

Lack of support for the recommendations

Lack of support to implement

Humiliation

Wasted time

Benefits not realised

Wrong requirements delivered

Unhappy customers

Problems escalating

Lack of respect across the business

Oh dear I could go on. Even if only one of the above was mitigated it's likely that the saving (in time or money) to the organisation over the year would more than pay for any coaching session or workshop. You may also like my post the top 10 things to remember when communicating.

7. Stressed

Well being and mental health all have a positive, negative or detrimental impact on outcomes and performance. However I'll leave those best able to communicate the significant cost of absenteeism, presenteeism and mental ill-health to a dear friend Amy McDonald over on HeadTorch.

Poet Angie Strachan who I've have heard speak at many of the Headtorch conferences has written a wonderful poem entitled Stressed- I'm not stressed.

Perhaps more importantly, what is the impact on performance from not dismantling these barriers?

I'm sure there will be teams full of very self aware individuals who do have well being, and who are confident, motivated, decisive, proactive, open to innovation and change and who are effectively influencing and communicating others.

For those teams where this is not the case the question to be answered is:

What action are you taking to demolish these barriers to optimal performance?

There's much you can do - but hiding behind the need for direct ROI for an intervention before taking action means you're going to be waiting a long time - whilst all of the outcomes above continue to deliver at best sub-optimal outcomes, and at worse significantly increased risk. (I suspect many of the horror stories of procurement gone wrong could point to one of these barriers being responsible.)

What action will you take today to move towards optimal performance?

I'm always happy to help.

Alison SmithUnlocking potential using unconventional tools
To find out more about coaching and soft skills interventions for you or your team do please get in touch - +44 (0)7770 538159 or alison@alisonsmith.eu.

Hypertext links in the text above take you to posts written on the subjects highlighted.

If after all that you still don't think you, or your team, do the soft fluffy stuff then you may want to read this rant on the subject, and a more recent and perhaps more considered post 'What should we call our soft skills'.

Wednesday, 16 August 2017

At 88, my dad worries about his mental capacity, and uses the Telegraph's cryptic crossword as a means of checking this. On our weekly call he will often say "I didn't do very well this week" and the niggle at the back of my mind would wonder whether decline was imminent. Until that is I asked " how many did you struggle with dad". His answer was "oh about 3 this week"."3 whole crosswords?" I asked."No 3 clues".
Let's put this into perspective, there's approximately 25 clues a day, and 7 crosswords a week, and my dad was worried that he was failing to answer less than 2% of the clues.
Interestingly, I'm happy if I manage one clue, and therefore have a much lower success target of about 4% to my dads 100%.
It just shows how easy it can be to set such high standards, and start to catastrophise a little too quickly.

Tuesday, 15 August 2017

If you thought that every email was a red light and stopped you in your tracks would you manage them any differently?

In yesterday's post I shared insights from the temporary traffic lights across from my house and applied them to managing my emails better. In the post I provided a number of different potential solutions to improving our email management.

One suggestion to shift our relationship with emails was using metaphor. After all, we consciously know the theory, many of us just don't always put it into practice. Which means the solution is more about managing the subconscious where responsibility for motivation, focus, willpower, developing routines or even resistance lie. Metaphor is such a great means of talking the language of our subconscious and communicating with it in a way that theory and logic just can't manage! (More about the power of metaphor here.)

Assuming you're like me, and may from time to time allow emails to take over your working day, and if the red light analogy didn't help shift your relationship with your emails, let's have some fun, get a little absurd if we can (as that's a very effective way to shift our thinking), and explore some additional analogies.

To make the most of the analogies you may want to first consider your answer to the following questions:

How many times a day do you check your emails?

How many times a day do you stop what you're doing to check/read an email?

What's the longest time you focus on something without distraction?

How long could you go and not check your emails before you get a little jumpy/twitchy?

What excuse reason do you give for not checking your emails less frequently?

When you return from a holiday, and after the initial email reading marathon, do you have a different relationship to checking emails?

Do you find it harder to concentrate and focus on tasks than you used to?

I'm sure many of you may have healthy relationships to your emails, but if as a result of your answers to these questions you realise they're ruling your life you may want to continue reading.

What insight might the following have on how to manage your emails:

Judge telling you what to do: my use of 'ruling your life' above made me realise we can often hand over power to our emails just like we do for the laws of the land. The question to be answered is, should emails have that much power? We certainly wouldn't allow a judge to tell us what to eat and when to eat it and yet it can seem like we allow emails to do so!

Playing football: the image comes to mind of a footballer with the ball headed for the goal, and then allowing the spectators to distract them and even having a conversation with them, and never actually getting anywhere near the goal, and certainly never being able to score!

Playing music: I went to a live recording of BBC Radio 2's Michael Ball show at the Edinburgh festival on Sunday, and Tokyo Myers played live :-). This video is a 3 minute version of a much longer version we heard. If we imagine him stopping 3 or 4 times, it's perhaps easier to understand what we're doing when we're allowing emails to distract us away from focusing on the task in hand.

Reading a book: I like to read a book before I go to bed, even if it is only a paragraph before my eyes close and I fall asleep. The problem with such a short reading time is I have to reread the paragraph the next time I return to the book. Isn't this what we have to do every time we allow an email to distract us from what we're doing, remind ourselves where we got to and then spend some time getting back into the flow?

Watching a movie: My favourite movie is Contact and I suspect I could watch that and zone in and out constantly and still understand where I am and what's going on. That's only, however, because I've watched the movie/film soooooooo many times. If we're watching a film for the first time there's going to be a maximum number of distractions we can manage before it reduces our understanding and enjoyment of the film. The key is knowing what that optimal number of distractions is, or determining at what frequency they can be accommodated in.

Shopping: In the HBR article the Cost of Continuously checking emails they use writing shopping lists as a reminder that we write the lists so we don't keep popping to the shops every time we run out of something. We go to the shops at regular intervals when its convenient to do so, and pick up everything we've added to the list at that time. Recognising, of course, that there may be emergencies where we absolutely must rush out and buy ice cream or chocolate NOW.

Eating: Just because it's there doesn't mean we should eat it - nor be eating constantly! Many of us can admit to being addicted to eating certain foods and yet fail to acknowledge the same behaviour with respect to checking emails. Which means sometimes the only answer is will power.

Setting sail: the best time to set sail is above a particular height of hide which means there's only certain times twice a day when you can set off, and as they're c12 hours apart one of them may be at more unsociable hours. Trying to set sail outside those times may mean you run aground, need more help, or find it impossible to do what you want to do.

Working with the tide - as per my vlog on the subject

Do please share any further suggestions in comments below - anything that helps us observe our relationship with emails from a different perspective, and might just provide a gap for us to make a different decision between the email arriving and us taking action to read it.

Alison Smith

The Purchasing Coach

Global procurement and business speaker, coach, consultant, facilitator, and trainer using unconventional tools (and a few conventional ones) to unlock personal, procurement and organisational potential.

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“Alison has a strong passion and energy for what she does which was demonstrated in her ability to run an innovative session for my team, (using a number of unconventional tools), that identified what was holding us back from being a high performing team. This ability, when coupled with her capability to bring fun into the session, was a powerful tool for helping my team realise their full potential.”

"Alison brings a unique blend of effective facilitation skills together with an in depth understanding of the corporate world. This enable her to subtly lead executives through the frameworks for change process (one of the unconventional tools she uses) that eliminates the barriers to moving forward and enables both individuals and teams to find the right track to improve performance, results and personal well being. I can highly recommend Alison to leaders who are looking for, and are prepared to explore something that is different but is so very effective.”